Two-Minute Warnings May Fuel Screen-Time Tantrums

Parents today face struggles our ancestors never could have imagined, from rampant food allergies to bullying on social media. But perhaps no two words are more uniquely associated with modern child-raising than “screen time.” Doctors caution against letting kids have too much of it, which is easy for them to say—they don’t have to be there when a parent pulls the plug. Researchers who have been studying these screen-time tantrums have some advice for families—like doing away with the popular two-minute warning.

Engineers at the University of Washington’s Computing for Healthy Living & Learning (CHiLL) Lab interviewed 27 families with toddlers and preschoolers to learn how these families handled screen time, and how it affected them. The results of those interviews informed a second study, in which 28 additional families, again with children ages 1 to 5, kept diaries of their screen-time experiences. Every day for two weeks, parents recorded what their kids were watching or doing, the type of technology they were using, what they—the parents—did during screen time, the reasons screen time ended, and how kids responded.

The results were surprisingly moderate. (They will be presented on May 9 at the Association for Computing Machinery's 2016 CHI conference in California.) Kids were okay with screen time ending 59 percent of the time, and they actually had positive reactions 19 percent of the time. Only 22 percent of unplugging situations were followed by tantrums or other negative reactions.

Of course, that 22 percent leaves quite an impression on a parent. "Most of the time these transitions actually go pretty smoothly, which can be hard for parents to recognize," senior author and associate professor of human-centered design and engineering Julie Kientz said in a press release. "If one out of five experiences is unpleasant enough that parents are always bracing themselves and worried about it, that colors their perceptions."

The screen-time diaries did yield an unexpected trend: Parents were better off just shutting screens down, rather than warning kids beforehand. Children were “significantly more upset about transitions” when they had advance notice that their screen time was about to end.

"We were really shocked—to the point that we thought, 'Well, maybe parents only give the two-minute warning right before something unpleasant or when they know a child is likely to put up resistance,'" Alexis Hiniker, the paper’s lead author and a doctoral student in human-centered design and engineering, said. "So we did a lot of things to control for that, but every way we sliced it, the two-minute warning made it worse."

The families’ diaries also dispelled another guilt-inducing myth: that parents plunk their kids down in front of the TV or tablet so they can go indulge themselves. "We did not see parents using screens as electronic babysitters so they could work or do something fun,” said Hiniker. "They usually pull out the iPad as a last line of defense or in a moment of desperation because the parent hasn't showered all day."

Kids seemed to respond better when screen time was part of a daily routine rather than a special treat. They also had an easier time moving on when their shows and games had natural end points, like levels or episodes. Autoplay, like that built into Netflix viewing, was a recipe for trouble. This is important data for media developers, the researchers say, since building in end points could help make a company’s digital products more family-friendly.

Parents also said that kids were more accepting of cutoff points when the technology was to blame. The researchers shared an anecdote of a little boy who discovered a new show while on vacation. When the family returned home and he couldn’t watch the show, he got very upset until his parents explained it just wasn’t available in their city. (If you’ve ever pretended your tablet’s battery was dead in order to pry it from your child’s hands, you’ll understand.)

"The kids we looked at for this particular study are right in that power-struggle age," Kientz said. "It's much easier to do that with a person than with technology. Once you take that parental withholding component out of it, kids are a lot more accepting."

If you have brothers or sisters, there was probably a point in your youth when you spent significant time bickering over—or at least privately obsessing over—whom Mom and Dad loved best. Was it the oldest sibling? The baby of the family? The seemingly forgotten middle kid?

As much as we'd like to believe that parents love all of their children equally, some parents do, apparently, love their youngest best, according to The Independent. A recent survey from the parenting website Mumsnet and its sister site, the grandparent-focused Gransnet, found that favoritism affects both parents and grandparents.

Out of 1185 parents and 1111 grandparents, 23 percent of parents and 42 percent of grandparents admitted to have a favorite out of their children or grandchildren. For parents, that tended to be the youngest—56 percent of those parents with a favorite said they preferred the baby of the family. Almost 40 percent of the grandparents with a favorite, meanwhile, preferred the oldest. Despite these numbers, half of the respondents thought having a favorite among their children and grandchildren is "awful," and the majority think it's damaging for that child's siblings.

Now, this isn't to say that youngest children experience blatant favoritism across all families. This wasn't a scientific study, and with only a few thousand users, the number of people with favorites is actually not as high as it might seem—23 percent is only around 272 parents, for instance. But other studies with a bit more scientific rigor have indicated that parents do usually have favorites among their children. In one study, 70 percent of fathers and 74 percent of mothers admitted to showing favoritism in their parenting. "Parents need to know that favoritism is normal," psychologist Ellen Weber Libby, who specializes in family dynamics, told The Wall Street Journalin 2017.

But youngest kids don't always feel the most loved. A 2005 study found that oldest children tended to feel like the preferred ones, and youngest children felt like their parents were biased toward their older siblings. Another study released in 2017 found that when youngest kids did feel like there was preferential treatment in their family, their relationships with their parents were more greatly affected than their older siblings, either for better (if they sensed they were the favorite) or for worse (if they sensed their siblings were). Feeling like the favorite or the lesser sibling didn't tend to affect older siblings' relationships with their parents.

However, the author of that study, Brigham Young University professor Alex Jensen, noted in a press release at the time that whether or not favoritism affects children tends to depend on how that favoritism is shown. "When parents are more loving and they're more supportive and consistent with all of the kids, the favoritism tends to not matter as much," he said, advising that “you need to treat them fairly, but not equally.” Sadly for those who don't feel like the golden child, a different study in 2016 suggests that there's not much you can do about it—mothers, at least, rarely change which child they favor most, even over the course of a lifetime.

Have you ever noticed that your fingers and toes get wrinkled when you’ve been soaking in water for a while? We often call this “prune hands,” because it makes your fingers look shriveled like a prune. (A prune is a dried plum.) The shriveling happens when blood vessels under your skin get narrower. This is caused by your autonomic (Aw-toe-NAW-mick) nervous system. Thissystem keeps your lungs breathing and your heart beating without you having to think about it.

The wrinkles seem to help us grip and not slip! Look at the bottom of your shoe. Does it have grooves? Those are called treads. The tires on cars and buses have treads too. The water that goes into those narrow grooves gets pushed away. It works the same way with your skin. Water drains from your hands through these grooves. We think this helps us to hold onto objects better. Scientists tested this theory with an experiment. They asked people with wet, wrinkled hands to pick up wet marbles and dry marbles. People picked up the wet marbles faster with wet, wrinkled hands.

Some scientists now think that humans evolved (Ee-VAWLVD)—changed over time—to have this reaction. Being able to hold onto wet things might have helped our ancient ancestors survive. Think about it: if your food lives in a wet place, like a river, ocean, or rainforest, you have a better chance of grabbing it if your fingers “stick” to it. If you are climbing a wet tree, wrinkled fingers might help keep you from falling. Wrinkled toes can help, too. If you’re barefoot, your toes need a good grip in wet or muddy places.

Want to hear more about the marble experiment? Watch this video from SciShow.